The Place Where We Are Right

Written by Yehuda Amichai and Stephen Mitchell

Read by Pádraig Ó Tuama

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

“The Place Where We Are Right” from The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell, with a New Foreword by C.K. Williams, © 1986, 1996, 2013 by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. Published by the University of California Press.

Contributors

Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet and novelist born in Würzburg, Germany, and he lived from 1924 to 2000. His poetry is collected in numerous works, including Open Closed Open, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, and The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai.

Stephen Mitchell is an author, poet, and translator. His works of translation include The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Gilgamesh, and Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Mitchell translated The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai with Chana Bloch. Image by Brie Childers.